Announcing the merger of the two city districts of Madurai, the DMK high command on Sunday constituted a committee to manage the party affairs in the temple town. 

Former MLA and party district secretary K Thalapathi has been appointed in charge of the nine-member committee which will manage the party’s city units covering Madurai Central, West, North and south constituencies. 

The reorganisation has been done as per the recommendations of the three-member committee, which tabled a report on reorganising the party districts to avoid confrontation between party districts.

Likewise, the party has given the sack to the party in-charge of Theni district, which is considered one of the weakest terrains of the DMK in the state. Party general secretary K Anbazhagan has replaced party in-charge of Theni M Jayakumar with ex Cumbum MLA Ramakrishnan. Elsewhere in Ramanathapuram, Suba Diwakaran, son of former minister Suba Thangavelan has been relieved of the post of district secretary and K Muthuramalingam has been appointed in charge of the district.

Most of the casualties of Sunday’s rejig were union secretaries in Kanniyakumari, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Ramanathapuram, Theni, Madurai and Sivagangai districts. Early last month, the party had sacked several functionaries in the western districts, where the party had managed to win only 12 of the 57 constituencies in the 2016 Assembly elections. A couple of district secretaries in Coimbatore and Namakkal were shown the door in the reorganisation exercise.

DMK working president MK Stalin on Sunday accused the AIADMK regime of not providing adequate opportunities in the Assembly and said that real democracy will blossom in Tamil Nadu soon. 

Listing out the various issues his party had raised in the ongoing Assembly session, including NEET, Salem-Chennai eight land Green Corridor, Thoothukudi firing and idol smuggling, Stalin, in a statement, said the AIADMK regime did not answer the queries appropriately. “The situation would change democratically in the state. 

A situation would arise in Tamil Nadu when people who posed queries would be able to answer. Real democracy will blossom. The rights of the states will be protected then,” the DMK working president, who is also the Leader of Opposition, said, suggesting the fall of the incumbent AIADMK regime and formation of DMK government soon.